Australia regulator allows joint domestic Gorgon gas marketing

Australia's competition regulator plans to allow U.S. major Chevron Corp and partners to jointly market gas from the Gorgon project in Australia to domestic consumers, it said on Thursday.

Imposing separate marketing conditions is likely to impose an additional investment risk to the joint venture partners and may prevent the partners from being able to sell all their share of the project's domestic gas obligations, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a statement.

Chevron and partners, ExxonMobil Corp and Royal Dutch Shell, on Monday gave a formal green light to the massive 15 million tonnes per year (tpy) Gorgon LNG project in western Australia, the world's biggest new gas project, at a lower than estimated cost of $37 billion. (Reporting by Fayen Wong; Editing by Michael Urquhart)